A Lantern in the Wind

Scraping together, life was hard in the village, made harder by unemployment. Factory-made goods from Britain had long replaced India's traditional arts. Factory-made textiles replaced weaving in the villages. The British, with their naked capitalism, destroyed the villagers' looms, their livelihood. Not to mention the winters, turbulent monsoons, droughts and famines in equal measure, kept them pinned down in poverty.